This is the name that Freedberg gave to the group of
painters trained and/or influenced by Bronzino, but who rejected his ideas in
favour of a more naturalistic painting. The main one was Santi di Tito, an
artist from San Sepolcro who trained with Cellini in Rome. On his return to
Florence in 1564, Santi wrestled with the implausible project of bringing
mannerism and naturalism together. Eventually he wearied of mannerism altogether
and returned to the classical high renaissance. His beautiful Holy Family
recently purchased by the Met still shows the residue of Bronzino, but its
grace and easiness suggest an artist who has returned to the principles of
classicism, notably Sarto and Raphael.

As his career progressed, Santi’s art became
more realistic and in tune with some of ideals of the Counter-Reformation.
Freedberg is right to say that his late altarpieces are not separate
stylistically from those of the seventeenth-century. What could be called Santi’s
masterpiece, the Vision of St Thomas Aquinas could be aligned comfortably
with art produced by the likes of post- Caravaggio artists such as Orazio
Gentileschi who modified Caravaggio’s realism and blended it with his refined
classicism. Also noticeable is matter-of-factness in the St Thomas
countering, but paradoxically aiding the appearance of a divine vision. This
treatment of religious art which eliminates the aesthetic qualities of maniera
in favour of more direct piety is commensurate with the demand for clarity in
art called for by the Council of Trent.

Other reformers like the Venetian
Jacopo Ligozzi who came to Florence not only strayed from the style of
mannerism but also its sources. Instead of drawing sculpture or avidly
assimilating Michelangelo’s art, Ligozzi painted watercolours of birds and
animals for clients of a scientific bent. Naturalism found its way into such
devotional images as Agony in the Garden, though its strident colours sit
oddly with his naturalistic observation of the landscape.

With most of its
major pieces taken, and time running out Florentine mannerism found itself
facing checkmate. In the next century Florentine artists like Francesco Furini
would take their cue from Caravaggio and the heirs of Leonardo, not the school
of Pontormo. His "Judith and Holofernes" betrays his debt to Caravaggio.

It is known that Bronzino was a pupil of Pontormo, and in
his formative years he was content to base his style on his master’s art; this
derivative tendency can be seen in the Washington Holy Family, significantly
attributed to Pontormo in earlier times.

Then there are Bronzino’s portraits
where his artistic personality begins to emerge. Though these famous portraits
of haughty aristocrats contain something of the Pontormo blueprint, there are
signs that the pupil has begun to evolve his own style in response to his
researches into Pontormo and the mannerist godfather- Michelangelo. The Ugolino
Martelli (Berlin) and Portrait of a Young Man (New York) rely upon
cursive draughtsmanship associated with Pontormo; but the contrapposto suggests
Michelangelo’s figures. As Freedberg points out, Bronzino’s art depends upon a
recipe that unites sharp delineation, an eye for the objective reality of
details and a pervasive aesthetic sense. His art is sophisticated, but
knowingly refined as if the artist is sharing a secret with those in the know.

Bronzino’s
researches into the “high maniera” culminate in his Pietà where
Michelangelo’s earlier version is re-invented as a cold, frozen mask of beauty
that inspires aesthetic contemplation rather than religious devotion. And in
the canonical Allegory in the National Gallery, Bronzino seems to have petrified
art as if to keep it away from human experience and emotions.

Unsurprisingly
Bronzino had many acolytes who though originating in non-maniera spaces
eventually succumbed to its style, perhaps envisaging it as the new Florentine mode
par excellence. Bronzino’s closest pupil, Allesandro Allori, faithfully adhered
to his master’s stylized use of Michelangelo, as can be seen in his Pearl
Fishers. This painting extracts motifs from various Michelangelo-esque
sources like the The Deluge and Cascina Cartoon, not to mention
the canon of classical sculpture.

Another one of Bronzino’s heirs, Giovanni Battista
Naldini, had an ambivalent attitude towards maniera; initially he embraced it
through Bronzino and Vasari; but subsequently reached back towards Sarto
through Pontormo (his first master) and the initial phase of the maniera.
Strong sfumato with a painterly brush shows a lack of sympathy with the
pronounced graphic tendency of mannerism; moreover sfumato suffuses Naldini’s
paintings with emotion, which, for Freedberg, places him halfway between Andrea
del Sarto and Barocci, subject of a current exhibition in London.

Some might
argue that the endgame of mannerism is all about a struggle between naturalism
and the intense artifice that characterised the style. Well before the
Florentine reformers –see below- the obscure Mirabella Cavalori was using light
in a realistic way in his genre scenes. If it were not for the strange
Pontormo-esque forms and abrupt spatial shifts, his Wool Factory could
remind us of the realist painters of the next century, like the Carracci and
Velasquez.

Pontormo and Rosso provide good case studies in mannerism because
they were both born in 1494 amidst the political and social turmoil in
renaissance Florence which is often seen as a cause of the mannerist mind-set.[1]
In 1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent had died which resulted in Savanorola growing
politically powerful. The two painters made their artistic debut whilist both
working for Andrea del Sarto on the fresco cycles at Santissima Annuziata between
the end of 1512 and the start of 1513. Just a glance at Pontormo’s Visitation
is enough to register his debt to main stream classicists like Andrea and Fra
Bartolommeo. As Heinrich Wöfflin enthused about this altarpiece, it raised the
“centralised scheme” of Andrea del Sarto “to the level of an architectonic
effect.”[2]Yet already we see Pontormo introducing his
own singular language; the book-ending figures (saint and amphora-bearing woman)
are too stiffly posed and seem to be demonstration pieces rather than elements unifying
the composition. Secondly, Pontormo ruffles the calm grandeur with his network
of glances across the painting, e.g. the woman on the steps, who looks directly
out at the viewer in contrast to the introspective central group. In this
altarpiece we also detect the influence of Fra Bartolommeo, though the Visitation
also contains signs of how Pontormo would divert from the Frate.

If we turn
away from Pontormo and look at Rosso’s Assumption of the Virgin in the
same church, we’ll see the echoes of Fra Bartolommeo’s Last Judgement in
this fresco. However, like Pontormo, Rosso has his own stylistic
idiosyncrasies: the drapery of the apostles falls over the ledge; there is a
strange “closed circle” in the rectangular block of the earthbound
apostles.

We could continue to chart the
careers of the “Dioscuri” (Horsetamers) of Florentine mannerism (Letta), but eventually their
paths would divide. Rosso moved further afield, Venice, France- but Pontormo
rarely strayed outside Florence where he painted and kept a journal of his
digestive maladies. In the words of Freedberg, Pontormo makes Fra Bartolommeo
“nervously complex” imposing a psychological immediacy on the viewer in such
works as S. Michele Visdomini altarpiece which fills the spectator with
excitement, but not necessarily spirituality. Comparing the site of Pontormo’s
stylistic rebellion with that of Rosso, the Uffizi Madonna and Saints of
1518, we can see that despite his classical models, Rosso is even more opposed
to the classical ideal. Apart from the grotesque faces, the colour, prismatic
in effect, dissolves plasticity of form in favour of a more optical than
sculptural effect.

Pontormo’s “formal research” (Letta) continues with the
London Joseph panels which gleefully warp space and perspective with
interesting though disorientating results. However, formal research is not
conducted as a means of intensifying the bizarre, but as a means of introducing
refinement and even a precious quality linked to sensibility (Freedberg).
Paradoxically, the mannerist experiments culminate in a work in which intense
expression conveyed through striking colour and swirling shapes are married
with a lucidity of line which mirrors Pontormo’s clear thinking- the Deposition,
his unqualified masterpiece and coda to his career.

As for Rosso, the latter stages of his career
are marked by fervid admiration of Michelangelo culminating in the Moses and
the Daughters of Jethro- abstract formalism via the Cascina cartoon-
and the Dead Christ, the latter one of the most successful amalgamations
of aestheticism with religiosity. With the Sack of Rome in 1627, all Rosso’s
paranoia and misery were unleashed; he fled northwards, leading an increasingly
nomadic existence. His last years were spent in France, where he played a large
role in founding the classical style there.